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Pumpkin People

by Sandra Lightburn; Ron Lightburn, illus.

This comically eerie picture book celebrates a folk tradition of the authors’ adopted hometown of Kentville, Nova Scotia. “Pumpkin people” (a term that Kentville, recognizing the tourism potential of folk traditions, has registered as a trademark) are a combination of scarecrow and jack o’ lantern – stuffed cornstalk bodies, pumpkin heads with painted faces – and can be found all over town around the time of the harvest festival.

In jaunty verse, the Lightburns’ book imagines the pumpkin people gathering at night and dancing around a bonfire. The idea of toys or inanimate creatures coming to life and partying while their human owners are asleep is always fun, and the Lightburns present a richly coloured and cheerful vision of the night’s doings.

Two children make a pumpkin person, then at night follow the strange creature to a party. An intriguing similarity to the “wild rumpus” of Maurice Sendak’s classic Where the Wild Things Are is made overt in one picture, in which a child, wearing the expression of Sendak’s Max, dances with pumpkin people who look very much like the Wild Things. In addition, the creepy pollarded trees early in the story are clearly borrowed from Arthur Rackham. The visual echoes of these and other classic fantasy illustrators will add a dimension of enjoyment for readers who recognize them.

The world of the Lightburns’ tale is, however, a wholly benign one, without any of the psychic darkness and fear of Max’s tantrum or the fairy tales that Rackham illustrated. Indeed, at the end of the party, one child is shown in the background carefully helping to put water on the bonfire.

 

Reviewer: Gwyneth Evans

Publisher: Nimbus Publishing

DETAILS

Price: $17.95

Page Count: 32 pp

Format: Cloth

ISBN: 978-1-55109-681-0

Released: Sept.

Issue Date: 2008-12

Categories: Picture Books

Age Range: 4-8